


Creation, Both Haunted And Holy

by QueasyBuddy



Series: Creature Only [1]
Category: Avatar: Legend of Korra, Avatar: The Last Airbender
Genre: Angst, Avatar Zuko (Avatar), But Consider: It fun, Chaos Avatar Zuko, Child Abuse, Childhood, Chronic Pain, Does This Count As An Exorcism?, Gen, Giving Depth To Spiritbending, Hama is Hama, Hopefully The Writing Improves As This Goes On, In Like. A Really Cruel Way., Inspired by MuffinLance, Inspired by Music, Not Compliant With Canon Lore, Not Korra Compliant, OOPSIE BADOOPSIE MURDEROOPSIE, Vaguely Eldritch, Yes Most Of These Things Are A Stretch, fanfiction logic, this gets graphic really really fast
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-07-28
Updated: 2021-01-08
Packaged: 2021-03-06 06:34:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 3
Words: 17,494
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25578904
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/QueasyBuddy/pseuds/QueasyBuddy
Summary: In the temple of her bed, the sheets are bathed in red.The broken womb, the hoarse voice of a woman screaming.But the scene is incomplete, for the night is rising high and the child may breathe, but refuses to cry.She prays, hopeful and so very wrong, until the sun comes up to the sky's center and the child in her arms stops moving.May any spirit aid my child, the woman screams out. May any creature take him in, make him its own!And somehow, in her despair, she finds hope, in the sudden screeching of her firstborn son, as the shadows seem to fade away, to dissipate from the corners of the room.The whispers of a miracle fill the air, as her son opens eyes of molten gold.Their nation is hopeful, they all sing his name, not quite managing to grasp their mistake.
Relationships: Hama & Zuko (Avatar), Vaatu & Zuko (Avatar)
Series: Creature Only [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1853830
Comments: 45
Kudos: 509





	1. Haunted And Holy

**Author's Note:**

  * For [MuffinLance](https://archiveofourown.org/users/MuffinLance/gifts).
  * Inspired by [The One Where Zuko's Hair Matches Sokka's and Other Tales](https://archiveofourown.org/works/21632206) by [MuffinLance](https://archiveofourown.org/users/MuffinLance/pseuds/MuffinLance). 



> me: im not gonna write another story, I'm not gonna write another story, I-
> 
> Am writing another story.
> 
> I'm weaning myself into slightly more serious stuff, because I wanna be an author someday //^^//. This work is not very good - I would call it clanky and silly, but nonetheless, I have to be bad before I can become good!
> 
> The story idea for the Chaos Avatar Zuko thing comes from @Muffinlance, which I thank dearly, as "child and spirit/monster friendship" is my favorite thing in the whole world.
> 
> The title comes from the half-alive song, titled "creature". It is christian, but it's alright 'cause it bangs!

The spirit inside him first told him how to properly set things on fire when he was four.

I - the narrator of this harrowingly average tale - am not going to beat around the bush this time around, for I have no prose to describe what it feels like to be partially possessed, or the vocabulary to say things such as what happens in the span of this story in a flowery, cute way. 

So, do not interrupt me. Yes, you are reading this, and, therefore cannot really interrupt me, as I am not _speaking_. No, you cannot stop now, even if all up to this point is a technicality.

So shut up and _listen_.

The spirit inside Zuko hadn't always been there, but the boy cannot quite remember a time where they weren't united.

(When asked about it, the Voice said he wasn't old enough to remember it)

He cannot get his friend - The one of many names, Vaatu himself, the spirit of change (although no, not monetary, sadly, for that would be far too convenient), also known as The Voice, Chaos Itself, and, again, a bunch of other boring names - to tell him what happened, what brought the two of them together.

Zuko just knows of burn marks around his neck, and harsh instructors, and a mom who is starting to think that maybe the fact that he has an imaginary friend at age eight is a bit weird, and a sister who, in The Great Vaatu's Words, is:

1 - Everyone's ideal sleep paralysis demon, at age six.

2 - The cutest toddler in the world.

_ 3 - What do you mean, Apprentice, that someone aged six is not a toddler or a sleep paralysis demon? _

Well, either way, Vaatu is right and little Azula is the scariest creature in the world.

At the moment, she is at the courtyard, brandishing a knife, which is on fire, and being chased around by both Zuko and their mother, Princess Ursa, a woman who cannot either bend or break, despite, on her own words, being "very close to snapping".

Azula thinks that causing heart attacks is fun, apparently, for Vaatu can feel his Apprentice's heartbeat going haywire, which well, fair, as he is being faced with a knife-wielding kindergartner, which is, at the moment, aiming said knife, which, in case Vaatu hasn't mentioned it yet, at a tree.

Said tree is _highly flammable_.

Vaatu is a great spirit, and has no heart or capacity to "snap", however, there is a part of his ancient wisdom that wishes, oh so deeply, to merely _retire_.

**"ZUKO, JUST LET HER SET IT ON FIRE ALREADY!"** He yells into the boy's head, not yet capable of fully seizing control of their shared Vessel.

His boy, much to his chagrin, cannot respond at the moment, however, that does not keep the child from shaking his head and accelerating.

However, he is not fast enough, and Azula, who already had a head-start, reaches the tree right before he can grab the flaming knife out of her chubby little hands.

Ursa lets out a scream, as the old bark - centuries old, there to see wars, so many fire lords (some of which lived for centuries), older than most people alive, old enough to be called "sir" by plenty of spirits - bursts into flames.

She is not his apprentice, but he gets to be proud of her by association.

**"Change is natural and welcome, my Vessel."** he says, a voice deep and rumbling that nobody else can hear **"Trying to delay - Or even worse, keep it from happening, little one, if a futile effort."**

Perhaps, Vaatu thinks, teaching his Little Vessel how to swear would benefit the both of them, as Zuko needs a healthy way to express himself that does not involve stabbing the palace walls, and then his fingers, with a hot knife.

  
  
  


-

  
  


Yes, teaching his apprentice how to swear would indeed bring the two of them great gains, especially considering the fact that Vaatu does not know modern swears himself, and "Ye stupendous donkey-monkey, who is a son of a mongoose-moose, I curse ye to the depths of Koh's plantation of sugarcane!" is not funky-fun with the kids these days.

The boy nurses a burn on his wrist, at the moment. Vaatu longs for the day he will be able to destroy that entire palace, build something new on top of it.

And maybe, just maybe, get to, in human terms, beat the everliving _poop_ out of Prince Ozai, who allowed his son's instructors to burn his wrists - something he needs to move to properly do his stupid Katas - when he couldn't do his stupid Katas.

**"May I suggest you something?"** he coaxes, as the shadows stretch a bit farther with the sunset.

"Sure, Voice." the boy says, tears still in his voice.

Vaatu knows plenty of the world, or at least how it was back in the old times. He's pretty sure he still knows how to make some good burn paste.

**"Go to the fair, and get some herbs."** he says **"I'll tell you which ones."**

Because terminologies are hard, and not all needs to be named. Kids these days, naming everything. Back in his time? Everyone learned how to differentiate stuff by sight and smell. Oh, except those weird little flowers. Those were kind of a gamble between tasty tea or horrible death.

"Couldn't we just go to the infirmary?" the child asks, out loud. Always out loud, always so difficult to communicate without gaining fame for being "insane".

He invokes the memories of the last infirmary visit, where help for his burns had been denied.

_"Because of Prince Ozai's orders",_ they'd said, invoking a weird urge in Vaatu to juice several pieces of porcelain.

-

  
  
  


The fair is bustling with activity, monotony forgotten in the sea of reds, yellows and blacks - too homogeneous in its ways, but pleasing to the eye, against the stark black of the cloudy sky.

Zuko and him explore, concealed by the shadows, wearing the closest thing to commoner clothes a prince like him could own.

_ Vaatu is not going to rant about rich privileges and class differences, Vaatu is not going to rant about class privileges and rich differences, Vaatu- _

Is ranting about class differences. 

**"Well, little one, can't you just see how unreasonable this is?"**

"No?" 

That, however, does not render either of them incapable of doing what they were meant to do, which is... to get some pre-made burn paste, because turns out, most of the old herbs of the Healing Sauce are extinct and/or illegal.

Apparently, one of them turned out to have hallucinogenic effects on humans, which is quite the odd thing, in Vaatu's metaphorical head.

In the crowd, nobody can hear or care for their talking. All they see is a tiny boy, wearing nobleman clothes - or at least an imitation of those -, talking to himself.

"We should come out here more often!" Zuko whispers, as they look at ornate bowls and tea cups.

A part of Vaatu wishes deeply to take control and break those glorified sippy cups. It would just be a quick swat, and they could just get away fast.

Yes, he is part of the balance of this world. However, he is the part of the balance that wishes to change things up, to do nothing but disrupt.

**"Break the tea pot, Apprentice."** he ushers, and, to an outsider, they'd see the boy take on an extremely disappointed look. Almost like the one of a person whose cat-moose decided to go on a rampage against all furniture.

"No, Voice" the boy says, afraid of speaking his name in public, even though fear is senseless.

Their bond hasn't existed in long enough of a time for the boy to truly get used to what a proper role model feels like, clearly.

But it's alright, they have plenty of years.

They spend a reasonable amount of time - nobody would or should come into Zuko's room while he supposedly sleeps, after all - walking around the night fair, picking up little firecrackers and setting them off.

It is a pleasant night, filled with _minor infractions._

**"Food is meant to be free, Apprentice."** he nudges the child on, as he stares at a particularly tasty-looking snack Vaatu cannot quite name.

"But that's dishonorable!" he whisper-yells, retracting a traitorous hand, that had begun reaching out for the skewer.

" **What in the world is more dishonorable than not taking care of yourself?"** he asks **"You have a vessel, and a growing one at that, small one. And you must nurture it."**   
  


He must nurture it, because great hardship will come. 

"But then someone else will have nothing to eat! And the salesman will be without money."

There is a single answer for both his doubts.

**"He has plenty of merchandise. Go on and get yourself some. Nobody will know."**

(In the end, despite objecting some more, Zuko takes the skewer, but leaves a little coin, because no great spirit can truly wean out a child of fire from its sense of honor)

  
  


-

  
  
  


Days go by. 

Zuko learns how to make his fire brighter, hotter, by pulling air to it, coercing it to be consumed. Vaatu doesn’t know how to explain that that isn’t quite firebending to him, but it’s alright.

Zuko learns how to wield the dao, and he learns how the other forms of bending are supposed to work.

**"Waterbending, my boy, is much like poetry** " says Vaatu, so very proud of the child, despite his sighs.

"Great. One more boring, boring thing to deal with."

**"The water only obeys those capable of coercing it, of... Convincing it to move, let's say."** he ignores, briefly **"** **So, in a certain way, it's like talking to it."**

(he knows Zuko sometimes feels like all of his pride for him is a compensation for how, no matter how hard he tries, nobody is ever proud of him. For how Azula talks to him even less, of how Mom stops trying to teach him things, of how Father... Doesn't.)

"That doesn't make it better, and you know it." They've both seen Zuko's rather... Poor, let's say, communication skills.

**"The Moon and the Sea understand better than any human, Vessel."** he doesn't know how to explain, so he shows him, the motions of the push and pull, the trading of information, the gentle suggestions, never impatient, never truly commanding. The signs of a master.

"Why do you want me to know this, Vaatu?" the boy asks, as he throws his favored turtleducks some berries.

Neither of them pay much attention to whether someone else is watching them, for that is not a relevant thing at the moment. Names have no importance, when you are surrounded by nothing that can hear you, after all. 

**"Because you, Prince Zuko"** he starts **"Are going to learn it."**   
  


The boy startles visibly, dropping a handful of his fruit in the water.

"How?" he whisper-shouts, almost like that is a great secret, something forbidden.

Now, there is an irrelevant detail, to be said about this day: It precedes Prince Zuko's ninth birthday, the day their bond had been created (the day that boy should have died).

**"We'll start with boiling water, and then we'll move on to talking to it lukewarm, and then cold."** says Vaatu, knowing the process is the relevant part. 

"No, how? I'm a firebender, Vaatu!" the boy swears, shoving his hand into the water, desperately fishing out the sweet treats from the pond. They both know how he means it: Impatient, harsh.

**"You are so much more, little one."** a tendril of shadows extends, and the mouth of the boy’s shadow moves. **"Do not fear changing accordingly. You have plenty to learn, and the denial of knowledge, simply because you think yourself incapable of applying it to anything, is a foolish move."**

To any passerby, coming there to check on that darling child, so oddly quiet, contrasting his typical mischief, it would seem as if the boy was talking to his own shadow, and, much worse than talking to a shadow, was the fact that the shadow was talking back, inaudible words mouthed by it, whenever the boy quieted down..

**“You, Prince Zuko, son of Princess Ursa and brother of Princess Azula, are my Avatar. Remember?”** says Vaatu.

“I know it.” he says, like the spirit is dumb. “But who is there to teach me? All of the _real_ waterbenders are dead, Vaatu.”

**"You will learn from the very first of them"** he explains **"The moon and the sea will be your teachers, soon enough. But first-"**

And Vaatu stops short. He does not know how to tell the boy that they need to leave. For, as much as he tries, he cannot quite grasp the way human beings are attached to these places...

These... _Homes_.

-

  
  
  


Uncle Iroh sent him and Azula gifts!

Zuko doesn’t know him very well, but he likes Uncle. He’s funny, and Lu Ten is even _funnier_ , and, last time he saw them, they didn’t mind him talking to Vaatu in front of them.

Maybe it was because he was still a little kiddy, though.

Well, he’s still a kid, and he’s anxious for the day Uncle and Lu Ten come back.

The gifts - a knife for him, and a doll for Azula - aren’t quite enough, compared to how much Zuko just wants their _company_ , and maybe some of Uncle’s tea, and maybe to play prank war with Lu Ten.

There is no need to say that the boy is very upset when, later that very day, while he walks to the spot he and Azula often play, he sees said girl staging an execution for the doll she’d been given.

“Azula, no!” he chides her, and hears Vaatu sigh in his head. He doesn’t know why, and he doesn’t care, because that’s a really pretty doll, and he doesn’t want Azula to burn something so cute.

“Azula, yes!” she lights up her hand - light, hot flames, perfectly controlled, and, most importantly, wielded by a small, unrestricted child.

He has an idea, suddenly.

“We’ll trade, okay?” Maybe giving a seven year old a knife is a bad idea, one might argue. Vaatu isn’t that one. “You get the knife, and I keep the doll, okay?”

Azula drops her hand, but it is still lit, and dangerously close to her clothes.

“Do I get to light it up?” she looks up at him.

“Only if you can get it hot enough to cut a rock!” he is excited now, because hot knives are really, really cool, especially when they’re really hot, and mom isn't there to stop them from doing cool tricks! 

He wonders if he can do that thing Mai does, where she can throw a knife anywhere and have it hit. If he can do it, then Mai will think he's so so so super cool!

  
  
  


-

  
  
  


Zuko grows up some more, oblivious to every rumor about him, yet giving up his attempts to convince Mom and Azula that The Voice is real.

Because really, nobody believes him.

_ (Nobody but the servants, who sometimes see the mouth of his reflection move, who sometimes see something else, glinting in the shadows. Staring them down. Daring them to speak against it.) _

  
  


-

  
  


Zuko sneaks out, on a night that would have otherwise been very relevant.

Azula doesn't. She is father’s loyal daughter, and she isn’t a failure like Zuzu. She can’t leave the palace, and it isn’t like she _wants_ to anyways.

She doesn't want to sleep, but she overheard that Father had an audition (it's a fancy adult meeting! It's super cool! She's gonna be on lots of meetings when she's fire lord, too, so she has to sneak in and watch them to learn) with the fire lord himself - she knows he's her grandfather, but it's such a far away term, so it doesn't matter.

And, as she watches from behind a pillar, silent and still, her father is told to sacrifice his firstborn son. As a punishment. Because he spoke out.

(and now Zuzu's gonna pay the price)

And, when she runs to Zuko's room, hiding her panic behind a thin veil of what, to anyone unsuspecting, would seem like mischief, she...

Sees it empty. Bare. 

They took her brother already.

They took Zuzu, who has a weird imaginary friend, which he has stopped talking about but still plays with when he thinks she isn’t looking, who pranks everyone all the time, who burns her ugly dolls with her and tries to learn every last one of Ty Lee's funny acrobatic tricks, and who chugs tea like his life depends on it, who hides pieces of his lunch in his pocket to feed the turtle-ducks, who...

Is _gone_.

The dum-dum got taken away. She was too late.

Yes, that might seem irrational, as it wasn't enough time, and she knows that Zuzu sometimes sneaks out, but here's what she also knows: That Zuzu only goes out in festival nights.

Tonight was no night for festivals, so her dum-dum was meant to be sleeping, but sleep-sleeping, not sleep-dead-

And thus, Azula, who in this world was just ever-so-slightly closer to her brother, walks. Any other child would be screaming, shouting and kicking, crying in panic.

However, Azula's fear is cold, and it makes her numb.

Her panic makes her walk, just a bit faster, ever so slightly more hesitant than she normally would, to her mother's quarters, far away from Father's.

Because she _knows_ nobody but Mother would believe her.

And so, by the next morning, nothing diverges from what it was supposed to be, in another world.

Princess Ursa is gone, Azula's dum-dum is alright, and the fire lord is dead.

He was _playing a prank_ , he told her, seemingly sensing the fact that she thought his absence weird. She doesn't tell him. It isn't the time to make anybody worried.

(He might go away, like mom did, if she tells him)

She is still proud of father, proud to stand next to him as he is crowned Fire Lord, sole ruler of their nation, the incarnation of Agni in flesh.

Zuko is oblivious to anything being wrong, but Azula isn’t.

She is her father’s loyal child, and she will make sure that he doesn’t see the need to get rid of her anytime soon.

  
  
  


-

  
  
  


His apprentice - his avatar -’s Uncle comes home, far too late to change the course of the quickly spiraling lives.

He comes changed, wise, his broken heart mended with the gold of the masters.

Vaatu can appreciate that in him, however, he cannot bring himself to trust in the man in the same way his larva does.

Said larva is, at the moment, sitting in the courtyard, rambling excitedly, as if to compensate for the older man’s atypical lack of small talk.

Eventually, the subject diverges from the latest plays and scripts Zuko has read, to what the two of them had been doing during the last couple of years.

“Well, nephew, I have fought my fair share of battles, but nothing too interesting for a boy your age.” something clouds the old man’s eyes. “But now, I’m quite old and frankly, boring. And your friend, how has he been?”

Zuko, of course, knows what “friend” his Uncle is talking about, considering that he was not allowed to go to school, being taught at the palace by tutors instead, and thus, was never really able to interact with other children.

“He’s doing great! Last week, he helped me through my katas, because he says the Sozin style of firebending is not the best for me, so he’s been showing me a lot of cool moves!”

General Iroh looks intrigued, as he sips his tea.

Vaatu cannot interrupt, cannot move in the reflection on the pond, or else he might risk being seen. Despite what his Apprentice is oblivious to, he knows about the rumors.

He isn’t stupid.

“What is his name, again?” the older man says, his smile suddenly strained.

“He’s called Vaatu, the great spirit of change, and he says we’ll be _great_ together!” Zuko smiles, looking up at his Uncle, happy to be believed for the first time in years.

General Iroh’s teacup falls to the ground, shattering upon the impact.

-

  
  
  


They were practicing their sneaky-moves, as Zuko calls them, when they overheard it.

The sages, talking. The maids, whispering.

Something was amiss, and Zuko, who doesn't know enough, yet sees too much, sneaks after the sages, as they walk through the hallways. 

For just long enough to know their destination.

And, when he knows that, he takes one of his alternative paths. Because he'd heard talk of his name, and, while curiosity killed the cat, satisfaction brought him back.

(Something tells him that what is incoming isn't quite exactly satisfactory).

So, he watches, hidden in a pillar, unknowing that his sister had been there before him.

“Grand Sage Chiaki.” greets the Fire Lord, sitting lazily in the dragon throne, yet nonetheless eliciting low bowing from his subordinates.

“Fire Lord Ozai.” Greets the oldest of the men, bald from many years of dealing with homicidal rulers, clearly wishing for nothing more than to leave that place. “What do you require our presence for, my lord?"

“My son, Prince Zuko” he sighs dramatically “Has something evil living in him. Something wicked, terrible indeed.”

Vaatu cannot run, and Vaatu cannot hide. They need to know the scope of the damage before making their retreat, afterall.

“What do you suggest we do to remedy the situation? Fire lord, sir.” another sage, much younger, asks, stupidly.

“We must rid my son off of this _curse_.” he tries to mask it, but there’s a glee in his voice, so deep and well-hidden. “For that, I fear only the fire of Great Agni can Cleanse my firstborn.”

A collective shiver runs through the men present.

A cleansing. A ritualistic burning, to banish evil spirits.

Usually a punishment reserved for the worst criminals, the ones believed to be possessed, overtaken by great evil.

The most despicable, the ones believed to be possessed by spirits.

(Of course, that is yet another practice that has been popularized since the Genocide. This is but a simple annotation, something up to your very own interpretation.)

However, Vaatu, the Voice, is no normal spirit, and really, not even normal spirits leave their hosts unless they die. That is, because usually, during a Cleansing of Fire, there rarely is the presence of any spirit but the one of whatever poor person is to be subjected to such a punishment.

Zuko is barely eleven. He’s tiny, and still has baby fat on his cheeks, and he’s going to _die_.

And Vaatu knows that is inevitable, that all avatars - of any kind of spirit, even the less powerful ones that cannot bend all elements - die. 

He knows that he could find another host.

But Zuko is the least boring thing he has had around for literal millennia, he reasons.

And he isn't going to let that little creature - that puny, irrelevant human-shaped thing, with the big golden eyes and the loud, shouty voice that hasn’t even started to crack - die.

Because he's just a kid, and yes, Vaatu is ancient and immortal and there will be billions - no, trillions - of children after that child, but it is not his time - their time - yet.

And, while that is irrational, he isn't going to let him die yet.

**"Apprentice, we must leave."** he says, as they stand in that cursed room, as the shadow that belongs to that boy speaks and the boy that belongs to that shadow stands, shock still.

"No." says the boy, his eyes still glazed over.

The discussion continues, oblivious to what hides in the shadowy corners of that room.

“How can we be sure that this supposed spirit is malicious enough to warrant a Cleanse, my lord?” asks the older sage, Chiaki, lifting up his head. 

“For” the fire lord drawls angrily “My brother, the Dragon of the West himself, has told me that Prince Zuko called that spirit Vaatu, the Incarnation of Darkness itself. What about that does not warrant purification, sage Chiaki?”

**“Leave. Now.”** Vaatu whispers, even though he knows that bright little child of his - that child who is going to die, that child who won’t last unless they run - is the only one who can hear him.

Loss motivates. Loss drives men and spirits alike forward. 

But Vaatu cannot afford to lose that child.

He wants to grapple, to take control, to drop his constant lessons and make that child run, but he can’t.

Because, with his bright little mind only seeing one honorable option, and his tiny heart racing so fast that one, if they only saw that, would believe it to belong to a jackrabbit, Zuko walks forward, into the light.

Vaatu must let him make his choices, even though it hurts. It is agonizing, watching him crawl away from the one protection the world could offer him in that situation.

“No, father.” says the child-who-will-soon-be-gone. “I will not allow you to cleanse me, for I have not brought down any dishonor or chaos.”

“I have come here to drag balance back into this world.” he spreads his arms open wide, and smiles, forcefully, trying to look strong, even though his voice cracks and breaks and his legs tremble “And if you wish to stop it, then face me in an Agni Kai.”

Silence.

So silent, that it seemed as if everyone could hear that child’s rabbit heart try to run away.

“How dare you use his name?” booms the Fire Lord, suddenly.

Vaatu forces himself back. That is his Vessel’s decision to be done.

He can no longer bring him any influence, but it is not yet time for him to say his goodbyes.

He cannot hold him, but he can bring comfort. He can drag the shadows, he can wrap them around his feet.

“How dare you insult Agni himself, by saying that you - a disgrace upon this nation, an insane, idiotic little child - are capable of being judged by his light? Has your _spirit_ driven you into such madness? Have your ghosts decided to let you show your true colors?”

It is not time for goodbyes, thinks Vaatu.

Whom is he trying to convince?

  
  


-

  
  


The cleanse happens by the morning.

Vaatu had spent the night trying to convince him to flee their cell. Trying to get him to summon any element, in that cold, metallic place, to aid them.

Zuko ignored him, and prayed.

By the morning, as the sun rose, he had yet to fall asleep, yet to give up begging for any name other than Vaatu’s, ignoring him in favor of pleading all night long.

As the sun rose that morning, the guards undressed him, to muzzle and shackle him instead.

There is no need for clothes.

A cleanse rarely leaves much other than bones and ashes, after all. No need to waste silk and gold on a criminal.

As they walk to the altar, Vaatu tries to talk, tries to take control, to make him say something, anything-

Even the shawl - meant to protect Agni’s eyes against whatever despicable monster in human skin was to be sentenced that day - is stripped from the child, as he is dropped by his father’s feet.

**“Larva”** he measures his words. It’s the first time he has actually called Zuko that to his face. **“We will be together in the end, little one.”**

Change comes, whether good or bad, thinks Vaatu, but he cannot bring himself to not try the very last thing.

For, as Fire Lord Ozai speaks his empty prayers, and as the crowd chants, and as Azula smiles, thinking that her brother deserved it, and as Iroh looks away, he has one last idea.

And, as inexperienced as he is at having a human of his own, he is still a powerful spirit.

And, although change is inevitable, sometimes to reach balance it must be delayed, thinks Vaatu.

To any outsider, what happens next would be the true proof of something evil, something truly wicked, for, as he is bathed by flames, the boy rises up.

And, as his mouth opens so unnaturally wide, and the blisters and burns seem to grow eyes, and the shadows seem to bend and twist and turn, all towards that child, not fleeing from the light but coming towards it, the world goes silent.

Silent, except for one single thing:

The screaming of a single creature, both haunted and holy.

  
  
  
  



	2. The Moon Will Sing

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> LOOK GUYS, I SWEAR I CAN EXPLAIN-
> 
> This was meant to be a series of one-shots, right?
> 
> But, you see, this is. A lot longer than I expected, to say the least.
> 
> So, I decided to do the cringy thing, and keep writing my fanfiction!
> 
> My writing has improved a bit since the first chapter of this, I think, so maybe the sudden change can give you that tasty, delicious whiplash!
> 
> Formatting has changed a good bit, too, but I promise it makes sense in the narrative!  
> If you notice any plot errors, please warn me and I'll go back and change it- The thing is that I simply forget a lot of details, as I am a bit of an idiot and can't memorize every word I slam-dunk down on paper.
> 
> Anyways, Triggers for this:  
> \- Graphic burns, oops!  
> \- child abuse, i suppose?? even though it's not that bad right now :^)  
> \- SPOILERS, hama.

In the moon’s light, an urutau-vulture screeches out its song, pure and eerie grief ringing out in the wind.

And that’s how Zuko’s mind briefly comes back to reality.

Awareness fading in and out with each breath he wheezes through.

With wakefulness, comes the purest of agonies. A mouth open, voice too hoarse to scream out for help.

The hot pain, all over him, the memories tugging at his head, the memories of-

The burning. A cleanse that felt so dirty, like-

Oh, the sheer _smell_ of it-

Of him.

The smell of cooked meat is his.

He wheezes out a cough, remembers the time Mom had no servants to help her, and had asked Azula to light up the fire for them to cook.

He tries thrashing about, to get a good view. 

Mom ought to be around there, around somewhere.

_(Even if it’s been so long since she was last around.)_

She must be there, somewhere he can’t see, maybe in the blurry shade of the trees. She will bring a bucket and cool water, and she will hold him and-

“W-Where’s mom?” he tries asking, to nothing, to no one. 

But only one of his ears hear it, the raspy, damaged sound that he can hardly recognize as his own voice.

He tries to ask again, words broken, tear tracks he can only feel in one cheek.

The burning pain he struggles to breathe over. 

He doesn’t know what happened, but he can’t move. Can’t do anything, nothing but begging for it to go away.

“Where?” his voice comes out, finally.

The pain in his throat finally registers with the blabbered words, and suddenly he feels like he’s been screaming for all too long.

**I’m sorry, Larva,** says the feeling of hands on him. **I’m so sorry it came to this.**

Ghostly hands that don’t quite hurt when they touch his left side.

There is no shadow to hold him, though.

He can’t remember what happened, but the questions come to his mind nonetheless.

Why does it hurt so much? Why is his arm numb, why can’t-

**Go to sleep. I’ll keep you safe, little Vessel.**

The voice is soft, warm.

And, as the moon sings her song, his brief moment of awareness fades off.

Only one eye closing, as he breathes out again. 

Painful, laboral.

His last thought is that he hates it.

The tone in the voice.

It’s all too-

.

.

.

  
  
  


-

  
  
  
  


It’s in the way the moon sings, as the boy’s skin peels off.

It’s in the way he doesn’t let any infection set in.

Scabbing away as the days pass, as Vaatu tries to heal him. 

But there’s a reason the two of them were together. Glued, some might say. 

Possessed, united fully.

He is part of Zuko, he is his mind and he is confined, locked away from seeking any further help. Not while the boy is that hurt, not while he can’t be awake and alive on his own.

Were it not a tragedy of occasion, his tendency to lock himself in the tiniest confides would be quite entertaining to watch. 

Maybe, were it not happening to him, of all creatures. 

Truly, he has been reduced to cowering on corners, to being not much more than a shadow.

Was it selfish, to wish for freedom when he had given it up to save his Vessel?

The two of them had done it.

An Avatar State of their own volition.

A sacrilege against the nature of a human body, a way to twist and bend their souls, braided together into a necklace of rope.

He doesn’t want to tell his boy what happened.

What the two of them had done.

He was too young to know what their purpose really was.

What would happen next, once he managed to get Zuko awake for more than a few minutes, enough time for them to scavenge, to do anything?

But keeping him awake, at that moment, would be nothing short of insane. 

Yes, he must change. But this is too painful. Vaatu can feel the pulsing, the infection begging to seep in, to eat away at their flesh.

The way the dead limb hangs limply, charred black. The way the damaged leg attracts flies, like a plate of fruit slathered in honey, only kept away by him.

Blisters that look like they could open into eyes, watch the world for them all.

And so, Vaatu brushes off the sickness, scares away the vermin.

Lets his presence seep through, for nothing can keep him from affecting the world, not even being tied so deeply to his vessel.

The woods grow around them, thick foliage, colorful flowers in the vines.

No other spirit to bless or curse them.

Just the lonesome pocket of the world to which Vaatu and his Vessel have gone.

He is the eye of the shadow, the chaos that lurks deep in that tiny, undisturbed piece of the world.

He is a warning to the creatures.

He warns the world to stay away, lest it feel his disruption. His returning strength, his effect on the world around them finally taking place again.

Now that they are united, he can see that they could easily become unstoppable.

Rotting limbs thrown into any position, blackened flesh still smelling like it's been cooked.

The way it all brews in the two of them is nauseating.

The sickness is in the bursts of consciousness, when the one eye that can close opens up, blurry from tears.

When his head faces up and he sobs, lonesome and in pain.

Vaatu tries keeping the pain at bay, even if just by lulling him to bed.

Their vengeance is yet to be completed.

Disaster will strike again, he will make **sure** of it.

He tries telling, he tries consoling.

**We will come back** , he says. **Rest for now, their fate is incoming.**

But he is just a voice in his head, the feeling of a ghost-limb that can't really pull back hair, brush away feverish sweat.

Even if their Vessel is growing more powerful, Vaatu feels as weak as he can be.

But, as consciousness slips away again, he can’t help but notice the way the world is shifting around them.

The way the rabbit-mice has started chasing the otter-fox.

It is a victory, but it feels **wrong**.

  
  
  
  


-

  
  
  


Unsteady feet, weight put all into one as Zuko drags himself up.

The pain is hot and hard, it almost drives away the overwhelming hunger.

He didn’t think it could get that bad.

**It could be worse,** Vaatu says, but his voice still sounds angry.

Maybe not at _him_ , but angry nonetheless.

_(Angry like-)_

When coherency slips away from his mind, when the pain is too much, as each of his slow, measured hops grows more and more exhaustive, he feels something in him beg for destruction.

But he won’t. 

In the same way that Vaatu won’t bring him food, in the same way he will stay quiet, never saying a word of what happened to him.

Zuko wants to proclaim that he isn’t forgiven, but for the moment, his focus is on the steps.

Barely more than hops, as his one useful hand hangs onto trees.

Bare feet, grass scratching up against the angry, still-bleeding skin.

The question is pressing, rubbing against the back of his mind, as he cries out and whines, intense pain barely dimmed.

How is he alive?

All firebenders are taught about the sheer power of their fire, about the great deeds and prowesses they can achieve.

About how much damage they can inflict upon their enemies, when they chose not to end their suffering.

It should be infected.

**I am trying not to let that happen** , Vaatu whispers in his head, like it's a secret, like saying it out loud will destroy their chances of it getting any better.

He isn’t moving in the shadow.

“The left side feels green.” he says, barely noticing he’s speaking at all.

Sunlight streams in through the gaps in the foliage. The moon is going to rise up soon, and the world is orange and it all feels green.

**Find help,** the voice instructs. **You need someone to help you.**

“First, food.” he argues, hearing the rumbling of his stomach. “I mean- Where there is food, there are people.”

**You make a surprisingly decent point** , he says, **and there ought to be some farmhouses around here.**

Zuko shudders.

People watched back there, people saw his shame burned into skin, his last rite of passage.

His whining sounds pitiful to his own head, but he can’t make his mouth shut up.

Involuntary sounds, flinches and shudders, as he drifts through.

Tall grass scraping against his wound, every touch sending new jolts of it. 

The gentle breeze, the falling petals of flowers, blown away by the wind.

All so gentle. The kind pulsing of the world’s fiery heart, a piece of peace in the battlefield of its little nations.

And all so, so very painful.

Maybe this tells more than it shows, but pain is hard to show through words, hard to show through barely coherent thoughts, by the mind of a child who had never been through such great agony before.

A bad leg that can’t sustain his weight much longer.

Tiny complaints amidst panting.

He feels like he is the only source of noise. The world is eerily still.

Holding its breath.

Zuko shudders, tree bark scraping at tiny hands.

He looks down on himself.

A foot half-blackened. White and violent red, all blistered and-

Cooked. Broken.

Zuko doesn’t look at his left arm.

He is all too broken, all too destroyed by the time he’s been through.

**You aren’t,** says the voice.

Scabs that peel away too easily, like they were never meant to form.

Droplets of blood calling for any animal. He is prey, and the world is so, so very much now. 

The disorganization of the world doesn’t manage to feel quite right, quite how it should be.

Like someone’s disrupted it before, like they’ve re-organized the world into something it shouldn’t be.

Something hangs in the air, hidden but never overshadowed by the smell of his tracks.

Yes, deliberate.

They’re onto something, he realizes.

A pike of wood, somewhere from which a scarecrow once stood.

“A garden.” he says. “I think we’ve found a garden.”

Purring at the back of his head, his blurry eye half-focusing around him.

A bush at the entrance.

Calling to him.

_Food._

It has to be food.

Overtaken by hunger, he can only see them.

The rest of the garden is just carrots, little beets and a cabbage or two. 

Nothing that looks that sweet.

And so, Zuko drops down, hisses in pain and twitches about, before grabbing a handful of berries in his one hand.

Vaatu takes a minute too long to realize they’re the kind used to make rat poison.

  
  


-

  
  
  


Her abode is a humble one.

A tiny inn she’s set up, rooms rarely occupied.

Of course, she has other places for travelers to sleep in.

It’s her lair, made of damp wood, of floorboards that creak comfortably under her old feet. Of roofs that leak, of the smell of a harmless old person.

She has a thousand little closets, a million nooks and crannies.

Hidden memorabilia, memories she’s carved back up for herself.

All wheatered by rain and by soot, but kept clean and tidy, far away from the fire.

She didn’t have many clients, but she had more than enough time to tend to the ones she had.

And so she did, for a time.

She kept herself satisfied, working towards her goals day in and out.

Followed through with a routine, day in and day out. Cooked plenty for herself, made sure she had the energy to follow through with her tasks.

That night, she can feel the full moon.

A welcome presence above her, making the world pulse with her divinity.

She has blessed the woman with her presence, and so, that night, she will go…

Watch the moon.

It’s a nice way to talk about the indulgence in her favourite of all things.

When she can make the world malleable around her, when she can dance and sing, pulling at the strings that bind the world together.

She smiles, feels it pull at her eyes.

That night will be formidable, she thinks

With finality, she treks along.

Yet, she doesn’t feel alone.

How can she, when the full moon rises, making the world finally feel alive again?

The leaves crackling under her feet as she strides, the roots and branches snapping under her like she is a mighty beast.

Remainders of the sun’s warmth slowly seeping out, Tui taking her rightful place in the throne of the sky.

Her court of stars, rising slow and steady in its march.

And the world is silent around her. She knows it ought to be gawking at her, the last of her kind.

“ _Oh_?” comes out of her mouth, before she can even stop herself.

An ear strained out.

“What is that…” she tsk-s in amusement, looks around with a half-absent mind.

Just what poor creature dares it, to choke in her garden, to foam over the leaves of her poison, to die in Hama’s territory?

  
  
  


-

  
  
  


Wakefulness comes slowly.

His brow furrows in confusion, only half his vision able to focus.

But he doesn’t need to.

All Zuko sees is darkness.

He shivers, suddenly hit with the sheer cold of the room.

It's eerie.

He doesn’t know where he is.

He lashes out, trashes about.

His feet burn. Tied together with rope.

There are no windows, the space cramped. The sickeningly sweet smell of mold, the only sound meeting his ears, his own panting.

Like a piece of bread that’s been left hanging around for all too long.

Something is wrong. 

It’s in the way his tongue feels garbled when he tries to talk, it’s in the way he can’t quite move.

It’s in the involuntary twitching of a dead limb, that he can’t stop, even when it hurts.

He can’t sit up, wouldn’t even if the dizziness would let him.

**Vessel, are you okay?** comes to his head.

Why didn’t you stop me, he tries asking. Where are we? Why are we here?

There are no little hands in the shadows, no feeling of a ghost hand touching him.

But the pain is dulled, pushed back. 

Cloaked.

“Where am I?” he looks around. “Va-Voice, where are we?”

**Someone brought us here, Larva. Get up, I’m curious.**

“Then move on your own.” he spits. “I’m tied up. Stupid.”

Regret makes him shake his head, but Vaatu is too old to hold up a grudge.  
  


**I can’t. We are united now, Larva. We are one in the same, and wherever you go, I go too.**

“Chained?” he remembers. Like he is. Stuck, chained.

**Chained. But fret not, my Larva, for stagnation will not come back to us. For now, though, you shall recover your energies.**

A groan, as he lifts his hand, swipes a bug from his brow.

_You sound like Uncle_ goes unsaid, but leaves the taste of bile on his mouth nonetheless.

Shudders, head shakes. The feeling of strands of patchy hair brushing against his shoulder.

He may not be alone, but there's no armor, no protection.

Zuko shivers, suddenly cold.

A part of him would give anything for that surge of power, for the feeling of the elements at his will, ready to be summoned up, to be harnessed and used as he deems fit.

For anything that can protect him, even with the collateral damage.

He can’t do anything, but he struggles to turn to his side nonetheless, to crawl out of the pile of rags that was his bed.

He can’t get up, so he drags his body along, pulls it slowly.

A trail of blood from his left side, scraped against the floorboards.

Dragged by his hand, whining and growling. 

He can’t untie himself, no matter how much he tries.

Some kind of different knot - intricate, woven tight.

Vaatu guides him slowly, words that barely register to his mind.

Nausea, the feeling of ants crawling at the tips of his fingers as he drags himself to the door.

**Get to the door - away from the fabric, it burns too easily - and then you can burn through the rope.**

And suddenly, he wants to scream.

“I’m not burning myself. Shut up!” he plops onto his right side, drool pooling at the left corner of his mouth.

Beyond his control.

**You know how to control the heat. It wouldn’t hurt. It's like pulling a bandage.**

“Shut up.” he tries screaming, but his voice comes off hoarse.

**… I apologize. I understand your fear, Vessel.**

“I’m not forgiving you.”  
  


**I won’t let you stagnate for long, but feel free to stand your ground for a few more days.**

“I’ll give you a week.” A bit of snark, that comes off soft.

A dry chuckle that breaks through the darkness.

He rolls his eyes, but can’t bring a smile up. He knows it would hurt. It would sting on his face, it would pull at the burns.

He reaches the door, struggles onto his knees, pulls at the handle.

Rattled, shaken, pulled and pushed with the feeblest of strengths.

Breaths growing quicker, as the weight of what he had done sets onto his shoulders.

Oh, what he did-

**You should’ve eaten your vegetables,** comes out as a light-hearted attempt, falling so very short.

“Shut up.” he wants to yell, because he’s locked in a strange home and oh Agni-

It’s dawning on him, slowly and steadily, just what he did.

Just what happened.

He hurt them.

_(He did much worse.)_

Falls to the floor. Looks at his one hand.

Now only one. Covered with little burns, old marks of his failures set onto his wrists. Little reminders of hands that were once there.

His breath, puffing out as smoke in the dark, cold room.

And suddenly, tears are falling down onto his hand.

_(Father did that.)_

No voice to comfort him. Nothing but the oppressiveness of his lonesome state.

Zuko wants to drown in tears, but his left eye refuses to cry, his bony body refuses to shake with sobs just yet.

So he just shrinks in there, holds himself close through the pain, pretends someone else is there to hold him.

" _W-why_?" He asks, feeling only half of his mouth move.

Words coming out garbled, blabbered through tears. 

No answer comes, and he feels all alone.

He is a big boy, he wants to remind himself.

A big boy indeed, and that's why he cries and cries and cries, ignoring how the hollow place of the moon is soon filled by Agni’s eye.

  
  
  


-

  
  
  


The walks back home tend to be a less than exciting ordeal.

Oh, of course there's glee. Catharsis, even. 

But lately, there’s some more than that. There’s the weight of the years on her shoulders, the soreness on her legs, the ache engraved deep into her bones.

That’s the vengeance of her people, of the men and women slain, torn down from the inside, overtaken by insanity.

She was meant to do it. It was why the art had come to her, it was why she had mastered it.

To bring down the rain of vengeance.

Nonetheless, that particular walk was made through with a quicker step, with a less vengeful head.

She had spent so long hurting, and the ones who hurt were the ones who learned how to heal the best.

She knew where to make it ache, and she had studied plenty of how to heal before.

_(Kanna and her, studying scrolls that would be burned less than a day later, until late at the night._

_Listening to the tribe's men sing and dance around the campfire, laughing and betting. Rolling their eyes, t_ _hey healed eachother with little kisses by the moonlight, as Hama listened to Tui's song, to the calling of the full moon._

_And with her friend's mittened hand in hers, she closed her eyes and felt the warm pulse of a world suddenly coming to life._

_In the night's light, the cold wind whipping against their warm bodies, they danced together._

_A dance that would soon turn into brisk movements, into desperate jabs._

_But, at the moment and to that very day, the times before were painted with a rose-tinted glass.)_

What mattered was that she had a patient, someone hurt as badly as she once was.

A son of ash and soot, a child with an eye burned open, blinded but still moving.

A child whose mere existence, whose life was astounding to her. How could that little thing keep going, how could he crawl to her and lay by her grassbed?

A little creature that proved her either insane or lucky enough to have a spirit in her hands.

He was going to be useful, she had decided when she found him foaming at the mouth, turning and twisting, rubbing dirt all over the open wound.

She’d cleaned him up, she had left him a nice little room, for an ashmaker that had yet to pay her back.

He would be grateful, that was certain.

And she’d seen first hand, how gratitude could destroy a man. Break down his flesh, make him bow and worship like a dog.

_(She'd stood, suspended in her cell, watching an affair below._

_The guard with bright yellow eyes, a glint like that of golden daggers, pointed towards her favorite prisoner._

_A young woman, barely more than a girl._

_She was from a neighboring tribe. Beautiful button nose and plump lips, bowing down low, foreign words slipping off her tongue._

_She was meant to sing to the moon and the sea, but she sung their tribe’s songs upon anyone’s request. Danced as well as she could, tied up in chains._

_A slap to the back of her head, something in the dirty ashmaker's speech._

_A correction, two apologies delivered in a low bow._

_Forgiveness in the form of a plump bowl of jook and not much else.)_

Her garden blooms around her.

What little use she could make of the soil there. Little plants, poisonous berries. Nothing too beautiful or lavish. She was just a humble old woman, afterall.

She’d been nice, asked around the village. Seeds, some tools. She was sweet and defenseless, and nobody ever dared suspect her to her face.

The village had never been a tribe.

And the house she lived in had always been just that. A house. Some might stretch it and call it a lair.

Not quite a home, as much as she tries to keep it cold, to make it feel like one when she closed her eyes, and look like one when she dared open them up. 

That place is still a land of fire. Lava below her, the sun all too hot, not a single break in his wicked reign.

She misses the polar winters. They’d always been so good for weeding out the weak and the fiery alike.

Perhaps her glasses are tinted blue, contrasting all too sharply against the blood-red of that place.

But the point still stands in her mind. That place is no real home. 

It doesn't have the foundations to be one.

It doesn't have the people to make it one.

There’s no Kana or Panuk or any of the children running about. There is no tribe to embrace her, no new stories to tell around the campfire. No dealings with the neighbors, and no polar-bear sled dogs to lead to the market every month.

There’s only the oppressive loneliness of a single person lost in the sea of snakes.

But for now, she can rejoice in the luxury of a new toy. One that can be mended, sewn and filled up with the truth. A child of ash, all hers.

(Malleable as the water she’d once sculpted into ice.)

Slow footsteps, steady smile. A bit of excitement, despite the bits of a lazy cat in her demeanor.

The doors of the inn, all open and empty.

Until the locked closet.

It’s their smallest room. It’s perfect for someone that small, that frail. 

A plant left in a pot too big will soon spread, grow out of control.

If he grows up well enough, if his leaves twist and bend and his roots stretch out as he tries to reach the sun, she will put him on a leash.

Hama had been wanting something to keep her entertained.

  
  
  


-

  
  
  


He sobs and heaves and nearly vomits once or twice.

Snot and bile, no comfort, no caress.

Not a word amidst the fit. Nothing that he can hear, nothing that can make itself noted in his mind.

His body hurts, but there is no infection to take him away, to lend him a hand.

He can’t think straight. Repulse fills his throat whenever he thinks of himself, whenever he opens his eye for enough time to truly see himself.

And he can’t do this, he thinks.

Like any child does, he slips into a spiral, falls down and down.

Thoughts swirling in his head, screams that his throat can't force out.

Until something breaks through, snaps him out of it.

The sound of a door creaking open.

A tiny stream of the morning’s light drifts into the room, so gentle yet so bright, revealing dust that doesn’t quite form bunnies and mold growing on the walls of a cramped closet.

The decrepit coldness is suddenly accentuated, with the gentle warmth that hits his back. 

He shudders, suddenly, as the light is taken away.

When he turns, a figure stands, back-lit in the doorway.

Old and hunched, his blurry eyes barely able to focus on anything but her kind smile.

He turns to her, ready to question why she left his legs tied up, why she locked him there, how long he'd been alone, what she wants to do now-

“Are- Are you-” he tries stuttering out a question, but suddenly, he realizes he doesn’t know just what he wants to ask.

She comes closer, looks down upon him.

“Bow down and ask, young one.” she says, gently. “Be respectful of this old woman, won’t you?”

Vaatu growls at the back of his head, and, for a second, he forgets that his friend is simply locked inside his mind, with no real effect on the world once they’re not alone.

So, he breathes in deep, pretends there’s nothing wrong inside him.

And drops down in a rigit bow, so the kind woman won’t burn him.

“I am Hama. Who are you?” a cane pokes his burnt side, the arm that’s no longer there.

Deep breath. He knows who he is, and so will she.

“I’m Zuko. Son of-”

“ _Nobody_.” she says. The harsh word startles him, slipped in such a gentle voice. “Not anymore. Not after what happened to you.”

He tries again.

“Zuko, son of P-”

A poke from the cane, right in a blister. He flinches and hisses, unable to stop himself.

“You are a son of nobody.” she says, her voice sweet as the smell of moldy grain. “After all that must’ve happened to you, it’s better as that. Poor thing.”

That silence lasts for a few seconds, before her voice returns, kinder, to his sight of nothing but fetid floorboards.

“Now, young one, tell me, what have they done to you?”

He won’t say. He won’t speak out again.

Not when Vaatu hisses, pure in his anger, taking over his head.

“Don’t you think you owe me that, after all I’ve helped you with?” a cane pokes his head, gently thumping against his skull. No real intention for pain, not on his bad side.

He gulps down something.

A single tear hits his lip, salty against the bitterness in his mouth.

Why does he cry? Why do the tears betray his mind, why does his gut feel so raw?

“I- I was burned.” he says.

“That I can see.” she says, gently. “Now come on, darling. I must know your affliction to heal you.”  
  


“I was burned and banished.” he says. Words spilling out dirty and fetid and spat out like falling teeth. 

But he tells no more. Hopefully, she won't see any tales of spirits, any curses or blessings to destroy.

(What if she wants to cleanse him, too?)

“Oh, dear.” she says, voice perfect in compassion.

**Be careful, Vessel** , Vaatu says in his head. His voice no longer a hiss, just a thought at the back of his mind. **Do not trust her. Do _not_.**

“That is very unfortunate.” she says. “Then, you aren’t Zuko, are you? As a banished boy, you have no name.”

“I- I still have my honor.” is the only defense he can give her.

And she laughs.

It would be warm, infectious as any other disease, were it not happening at that moment, when he felt raw and when his vulnerability was so easy to turn into anger.

“I am Hama, and you are Nobody.”

This is the point where the scene should end. Here, it should all fade away to silence, to maybe a sob or two, a twitch or whine at his own discomfort, until he is instructed to get up.

But _please_ , remember just who we are talking about.

Nothing ends when or how it should, down here.

“B-But-” he tries stammering out, his heart thundering in his chest. His voice can’t come out as a scream, but it tries.

Maybe, a part of him thinks, his voice will be heard then.

She pokes him again, straight at the ribs.

“Nobody.” she says. “ _Nobody_ , with that attitude.”  
  


If only she knew, he wanted to say.

**Be nobody,** Vaatu whispers, locked inside his head.

Zuko wants to fight. He wants to bite and gnash and destroy, to bend and twist and fall upon that state again, that state that made him-

“Not nobody,” he says. “I- I’ll prove to you. I’m not nobody. I swear on my honor.”

He can feel her smile.

“ _Son_ of nobody, then.” she says. “But make good on that promise, please.”

Hissing in his head, he looks up.

Tap, straight at a hollowed-out cheek.

“Stay down.” she says. “The light might hurt your eyes, so keep down low, son. I’ll get you something to eat.”

  
  
  
  


-


	3. Hold My Hand (To The Bottom Of The River)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The first moon.
> 
> (So many left to go)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> TW: BACK AT IT AGAIN WITH THE CHILD ABUSE AND GRAPHIC BURNS ON KRISPY KREME
> 
> (fun fact: i distinctively remember waking up one day and thinking "oh well, back at it again at kreamy krispies" as my very first coherent thought)

  
  


The rise of slow ribbons of steam, up into Zuko’s face.

As coherency slowly returns, the foreignity of his body becomes distracting, starts to overtake his mind. The pain, not quite dulled over, the way it sticks to him like something he’d been born with.

The irritating movement of his unfocused left eye, the way it won’t stop, won’t put its sights anywhere with any real care, any real ability.

It’s just a blurry bundle of things he can’t properly discern, from the ever-moving thing.

Hama stares down on him, like he is a beast from another world, a fascinating creature she found in her rat trap.

But he’s just him.

There is no comfort in knowing of his nature, once the mantle of royalty and authority is shed. There is no comfort in knowing he is nothing but a burned, disgusting mess. The filthy form of someone destined to be a nobody, bowing to a bowl of plain jook, feeling the slightly off smell it emanates and still feeling obligated to eat it.

It wouldn’t be appetizing, even if his stomach didn’t hurt just from looking at it, even if his head didn’t ache and his whole body didn’t sting when he thought about trying to grab onto a chopstick or a spoon or-

Something tells him away, makes him shy off from vocalizing any of his doubts and shake his head.

The voice of Vaatu’s gone silent, nothing but his presence there, a film over his left side. It doesn’t take away the pain, doesn’t dim off the white hotness, the mind-destroying suffering.

He winces, shuts his eyes.

**I am keeping off the infection** , comes the whisper in his head, as if he could be somehow heard.

It doesn’t feel like it, he wants to say. 

The taste of copper in his mouth, the smell of food gone bad making something climb up his throat. The plain silence, assaulting him from all directions. Nothing is heard but his heavy, labored breaths.

_(Does he want to know what his face looks like?)_

The words don’t fall, the steam doesn’t condense. The world is an unmoving pond. He is not a rock, and his impact makes no ripples.

Shaggy retakes, muttered rambles.

Hama just looks, patient as if she’d waited her whole life to be a witness to his misery, to the pulsating mass that refuses to act.

Zuko coughs and heaves, mouth opening and closing. Mud and filth and cooked meat.

Opens again, lets the words drip away like tears.

“Do- Do you- we have any cutlery?”

She laughs, and his head tilts to the side.

He doesn’t understand.

Zuko is a _prince_. He is no matter to be laughed at, not by filthy peasant women.

Vaatu’s low hiss, on the back of his mind, sets him off somehow.

“What are you laughing at?” he asks. Flinches at his voice. Hoarse from crying and screaming, rude and brash. “Do you not know who I am?!”

His challenge is felt, retributed in the same tongue, with a burst of pain.

The cane pierces through a blister in his arm.

It stays for a second, blissfully agonizing, before she digs it in deeper. 

A brief burial, by an expressionlessly cold face.

Hama’s eyes are dull, no glee in the pain caused to him, in the tear that pools up in his one good eye as she pokes him like a misbehaving dog.

There is no shine in them, even as the sun lights her from the back, bathes her in a halo of pale gold.

“You are nobody, and you eat like nobody.” she spits.

“But-” he tries to argue, before the cane is pulled back.

Against his ribs, in the in-between, the hollow, fleshy skin.

Zuko drops to the ground, sees her pull the tip of the wooden cane away.

Stained with crimson blood, with the off smell of copper and something else, just underneath.

The way people are weaned off of rebellion. Slow, steady steps.

Seemingly gentle.

Easier than it appears to be.

“My kindness is a gift that can be taken back. Behave, dear, and pay for what you get, before you end up with _nothing_.”

  
  
  


-

  
  
  


The days pass, like the drip of morning dew, like the thousand things Zuko doesn’t think he’ll ever get to see again.

The dawns and dusks he slips through, his half-healed daze a blanket over his ever-stagnant form.

Movement doesn’t seem to hurt any less, as Agni leaves him behind time and time again. If anything, the sleep that comes to him is no relief.

It is just an excuse for more pain, more sores, more forever-open wounds.

The dryness in Zuko’s throat is a third companion in their life, the twitching he can’t control just another thing he’s unable to get used to.

He refuses to not swim in it, the misery of his situation, the growing smell of waste, the growing boredom that no conversations with Vaatu can push back.

His room is an empty cubicle.

It’s somewhere people pass by, like a hole in the wall.

He hears them sometimes, talking to Hama.

Renting their own space.

“Please, help.” he begs, when the bubbles and boils burst open, leak fresh blood all over his back. As his hand reaches out to the figures, to the slivers of shadow their feet make in the door, waves of nausea keep him company, make him gag on bile.

All the consequences for his inconsequent actions, his poor attempts at finding a bit of comfort.

There is nothing to draw tears from.

He is not a child anymore, and he wouldn't cry, even if he could.

Because Zuko is not weak.

His only way to keep track of the time is his wicked flame, the sense of the sun, never thriving but never being snuffed out.

The questions come out slurred, whispered through dripping bile, slipping through his dry lips, out from his mouth like rabid foam.

Vaatu’s answers are slow to come, delivered through the pain in his temple, bobbing up and down with the deep cadence of the voice.

**I can’t help** , he says. **You have to rest. Remember, the time for action will come when our strength is restored, apprentice.**

There is no room for argument.

But that had never detained him, before, he wants to remember. It’s not that there’s no room.

It’s that there is no _will_.

With that thought, he’s hit with a wave of missing.

He misses his mom. He misses her warm hands, her sweet words and her absently adoring love. 

He misses the sun shining on his intact face, he misses the water as Azula pushed him out of Mom’s arms and into the turtleduck pond.

He misses his sister, even though she probably wouldn’t ever feel the same way about him.

He misses being out, seeing the flowers in bloom with eyes that can focus. He misses sleeping in a room warm and cozy, he misses thin sheets and thick, fluffy pillows surrounding him.

A part of Zuko wants to ask Vaatu if he misses the toy he’d once said to be his favorite.

But, above all the toys and all the ponds and fluffy pillows, he misses not hurting.

He misses not hurting, as the sun sets down once again in the sky, the world going back to darkness, making him go blind.

And as the door opens, he breathes deep, braces himself. 

A hand fisted tight against his blanket, finger poking through one of the holes.

There is no question, of wheter he hurts, of wheter there is anything he wants.

With her light, comes the dust, the feeling of filth being put back into perspective, again and again.

“Let’s look at your wound, before you try to get up.” Hama says.

It’s an excuse, he knows that.

He doesn’t know what it is an excuse for, but these days, Zuko doesn’t think he knows much.

Not much else, other than the lack of any burn paste, of any medicine. Just the way she grips, wipes bloodstained hands on his cheek.

“Back at home, I trained to be a healer.” she says, every time.

A repeating routine, day in and day out, in the dim twilight, right before his vision goes dark and Agni gets away for him, ignorant of his prayers.

“W- Why don’t you heal me, then?!” his voice is hoarse, sounding like broken grass.

Zuko’s voice lacks all the strength, feels like broken glass.

“I can’t heal a wound like yours.” she says. “It will heal on its own, little spirit. There’s no infection, you just need to rest some more.”  
  


And she pets his hair back, cups his cheek, nails scratching at the blisters.

Eyes gazing deep into his.

Dead fish, expressionlessly passionate.

“You’re fascinating.” Hama mutters.

“ _Why_?” he is two, for a second. Strong enough to question, strong enough to show he'd never learned.

“Oh, dearie, you just don’t seem to heal. You don’t even seem to learn.” the nails dig deep, where his ear had once been.

“You’re unchanging.”

Dead stillness.

“You’re so _stubborn_.”

Laughter, filling up the air.

“But I know you’ll get how to deal with it.”  
  


  
  
  


-

  
  
  
  


The days pass, the clock ticking at the back of Vaatu’s consciousness.

Him and his vessel rise up with the sun, march along with Agni’s chariot, limping from corner to corner of the room.

A locked animal, waiting in silence, meditating to no avail.

They beg for change, they beg for something to happen. 

At points like those, when they find themselves in unnatural circumstances, all change seems good, all change seems like it's a saving grace.

But the routine refuses to break, the door only creaks open to let the same person in, time and time again.

Bathed by a halo of pale light, her dead eyes staring down on them.

They are walked through the steps of the routine, forever studying the script to a ritualistic play.

Despite Vaatu’s efforts, Zuko bows down, unsteady heartbeat and jittering hands, damaged nerves expressing their discontent.

There is no controling the movement, the way his left side trembles unevenly, never stops twitching, as they knew low by her doorstep, hearing the agonizingly slow creak.

“Sunlight doesn’t hurt you when you stay down low, little spirit.” she mutters, that particular evening. “But you have to get up, today.”

There is no talking to her, but that isn’t something neither Vaatu nor the larva learn.

“Why?” Zuko asks, staying down low.  
  


“Like this, you disgust me. You need some clothes.” she tsk-s softly. “You fire people… Your filth runs deep. In and out.”

“Not filthy.” he says. “I am not filthy, I am-”  
  


A dance of prodding, digging and pulling.

“Don’t talk. That’s not needed.” she lifts his chin with the cane, takes a brief look at his face. Suddenly, lets his head drop back down.

The lines of her mouth, pulled into a disgusted grimace, seen even from down low.  
  


He puffs out a wisp of smoke, flinches like he’s burned himself..

**There is nothing to fear. Wait until she looks away and run,** he instructs.

But she pushes the door closed, almost as if she’d heard him.

Sets down a wooden bucket by them, throws a piece of cloth at his face.

“Scrub, nobody.” she instructs. “You reek, so wash yourself. Thankless brat.”

“Not nobody.” Zuko says, now an instinct, just as he flinches before the cane even hits.

“No shower, then?” she asks him, looking down on them with disgust.

The stammering begins, and the stammering continues.

The eyes that never leave, the invasive comments as she settles down in front of the door.

Cold water, cold eyes.

Sinking stomach, dropping slowly.

He seethes, the rage of hands grabbing onto his vessel.

Hisses and growls, promises to plan for something.

The boy’s mouth opens, closes again as Hama’s foot tap-taps on the wood floor, as she goes silent, almost as if Vaatu was overheard.

Rage, disgust.

Filthy towel, some old, ragged clothes.

Plain, gray and brown.

“You’d look prettier in blue.” the filthy woman says.

Fabric scratching against the never-closing wounds, the ever-limping foot.

A body barely scrubbed, the feeling of filth somehow stronger than before.

  
  
  


-

  
  
  


The days trickle by, the blood never quite stops seeping, when the wounds open up over and over again.

It doesn’t feel like healing.

He doesn’t think it’s supposed to.

Nature gains its order, and his is of a wound's refusal to stop growing, changing.

It’s just the constant prodding, the ever-lasting peasant’s bow, the remains of his dignity pulled away, like strips of dying skin.

“Is this how _everyone_ lives?” he asks one night, as Tui shines above him on the sky, blissfully unseen, hopefully ignorant.

Too scared to move, too hurt to get up for much more than the waste bucket.

The smell of filth grows, the feeling of a skin that isn’t quite his. At each passing day, he feels more and more nauseated.

“Am I dying?” he reaches out a hand, barely more than a silhouette in the darkness of the room.

**You are getting better,** Vaatu says. **But it is the nature of our pact. I will keep the infection off of the wound, and it won’t kill you. It won’t heal either, though.**

“Why not?”  
  


Because change. I’m keeping change off, to not die before balance is restored.

He doesn’t ask what will happen after things are back how they were supposed to be.

When the war ends.

It’s irrelevant, to ask if anything will go back to how it was before.

Vaatu doesn’t lie to him, even if the ways from before are something he misses too.

  
  


He shakes his head, closes his eyes.

Imagines the smell of the palace garden, of grass and stale bread, crumbled up and tough in hi shands. Fresh dirt and dew dripping off of leaves.

“I wanna go home.” his voice comes off a whine, and suddenly, he feels like destroying that place.

Burning it all down.

Something tugs at his heart, something makes him want to burn the other side of himself.

Zuko’s throat feels blocked.

He pushes it back, swallows it down, back into the corner of his mind where the pain lies.

But nonetheless, the urge to sob and heave and vomit up what little he got down that morning stays in the same place.

He can’t even roll over, hug himself.

Zuko’s eyes are heavy, his shoulders sagging, the silence weighing heavy on his chest.

“Why don’t you _talk_?” he asks out.

**Because we must conserve our energies. Bide our time.**

“No.” Zuko suddenly shakes his head, hops up on the bed.

**No for what?**

“ _No_.” his stomach lurches, but he stands up.

Frail deer legs.

“I’m going to train.” he says. 

**You shouldn’t.**

“Why not?”

**As much as I have kept the infection away, as much as I have taken to your left side in order to stop it from killing you, Larva, it’s still an injury. You still have to recover.**

“I won’t recover by doing nothing,” he says. “I’ll just wither away.”

A sigh in his mind.

**Fair enough. Do you want to burn?**

Zuko stops, eyes wide.

With his next breath, comes a wisp of smoke. The sight of it is enough to make him flinch, feel like he’s about to puke.

Cooked flesh.

His flesh, Father’s hands. 

_Unjust judgement._

“Never.” he resigns. “Never again.”

**Eventually** , Vaatu says.

**Don’t cling to the fear, Vessel.**

**Not if you want to end this, once and for all.**

  
  
  
  


-

  
  
  


Feeding the spirit is no longer all that satisfying, to Hama. His inhuman nature has grown into something she is able to get used to. Pushing past it, the boy is a bit plain, boring.

Stubborn as a rock, even if withering day by day. A slow degeneration, a display all for her.

The script thus far has been rehearsed into submission, decorated and programmed into his tiny head.

Yes, he is a fascinating case study, but Hama is young at heart, and her toys tend to bore her easily.

More often than not, she feels fond of the half-spirit.

The mostly-intact side is cute. Long and skinny, but sometimes, when he thinks she isn’t looking, his eyes light up just enough to remind her that the thing is alive.

She genuinely enjoys it, the way he squirms, flinches before the sight of her cane. 

Eats with his hands, his stomach begging for more even as he bows low and thanks her.

But there’s only so much that a spirit’s blessing can do for a vessel with nothing to enrich its days. The boy is not human, but that no longer makes him that much special.

And so, as the sun shines his wicked blessing upon that land, as the clouds shy away from relieving the drought, she walks down to the kitchen, hunts down the birdcage she’d once kept in a cabinet.

She finds it hidden where she’d last left it. A dingy, wooden thing, shaped like a tiny, ornate house.

Paint that’s peeled and faded away, like the memories of a place she’d once called home.

The smell of rot, clogging familiarity.

Hama shakes her head, places her finding on the table. Leaves her thoughts behind, memories drowned by the muttering of her mind.

Reminders of games she’d once played, other children she’d once comforted. Children always loved games, no matter what hole they crawled out from.

With that thought, she smiles.

_(The light breaks through the darkness of the dungeon, the door creaking open for a pair of guards._

_Cruel smiles, dragging a chained-up boy to his soon-to-be resting place._

_It had been emptied earlier that day._

_Euthanasia, she remembers thinking. That was the term, the right thing to call what they were slowly being put through._

_He is tiny and his cheeks are hollow from the transportation. His neck is bruised and his beady eyes are wide, frightened, soon to grow used to the darkness._

_And Hama is young, that time. She is not interested in wasting away on a tiny prison cell, not if she can help somebody else._

_She may have no deeds to do, no greatness to commit to, but she is kind and naive, and the child is thrown in the cell right beside hers._

_Through the metal bars, his hands slip a bit, reach out and grip the steel._

_His tears don’t bring her anything._

_She is yet to grow an enjoyment from that kind of pleasure._

_Something in her mind, at that time, is animalistic. It begs to show the kindness it wants to see in the world._

_Soon enough, she will think it to be irrational. Not cruel, but thoughtless._

_The words, in the dialect she spoke back in the village, slip out with ease. Sentences, half formed out of the common tongue, half in the archaic language of the old south._

_“Do you want to play a game, son?” is a kind, soft whisper.)_

  
  


Hama still loves them, in a certain manner. It’s the once-new way of enjoying things, of finding happiness in the darkness. Now, it's nostalgical, whimsical.

She walks into her kitchen.

The repeated song of creaking floorboards, skittering cockroach-rat feet. The stools and the table, the old ceramic bowl she takes into her hands.

Ceremonially, she walks to her fire outside.

It is not running, but above it hangs a pot.

A cauldroom, some might say, sitting in its spot on her garden.

Rightfully hung above burned terrain, over a pile of blackened wood.

The smile on her face, as a swift motion of her hand lifts up a bit of soup.

It was not quite suaasat, but it got the deed done. She fills the ceramic bowl, drags in some potatoes and onions along.

That will do it.

Inside the bowl, into the birdcage she locks.

She likes games.

Hama shakes her head, lets the odd feeling fade away.

There is nothing wrong with having a young heart.

  
  
  


-

  
  
  


He paces, frown etched onto his features.

Something is _off_.

And Zuko can’t help but have his heart pick up, his hand tremble, his leg twitch when he settles down onto his bedding again.

Is it good?

It seems like change.

It's because of the smell, he realizes.

It comes suddenly, bursting through the silenced stagnation of the evening, the plainness and pain.

Through the order, the tiniest sign of hope.

A disruption, formed by the scent of plain broth.

Zuko sits up, groans, a series of twitches pulling at his left side.

The door is barely open, and he is already bowing low, pretending his stomach does not roar from the smell.

Against his forever-scraped knee, the wood’s splinters are a familiar companion, apathetically digging into him.

“Hello, spirit.” her voice sounds warm, like she’s somehow alive.

Despite that, he doesn’t have to look up to see her dead, fishy eyes staring down on him.

Zuko breathes out, swallows down something in his throat. The familiar sting, the unfamiliar smell.

Something is different.

In those weeks, nothing was ever different.

**She fed us yesterday, Vessel.** Vaatu mutters in his head. Change, change. It’s a change of pace.

Something in his voice, usually so patient.

Zuko doesn’t like that.

It takes less time than some might think, to drive a man mad, to take him off his own head.

“Look up.” she instructs. “I have a surprise for you.”

Heart in his throat, he makes his face complacent, false expressionlesness washing over him.

A thin façade, not even good enough to be comforting.

Don’t show fear.

He looks just like her, like that.

The prize is set.

“I want you to figure out a way to get to the food.” she simply says. “Come on, make this _entertaining_.”

  
  
  


-

  
  
  


The woman gets up after half an hour and three spilled bits of the broth later.

Back in the comforting darkness, when it’s just the blurry eye against a world with not a sign of Raava's light.

Zuko shoves his fingers through the birdcage’s crates. He doesn’t seem to either notice or care much for the woman’s desistance.

He just takes droplets into his fingers, licks them like that.

In the birdcage’s floor, bits of overcooked potato that fell from his uncoordinated fingers.

**Vessel** , Vaatu mutters, with no eyes to roll in amusement. **We have a better way of doing this.**

He can feel the thump-thump of an erratic, worn-out heartbeat, filled with the ecstasy of the simple possibility of some relief to the starvation.

**Vessel, listen.** He commands, but there is no response. **Larva. _Zuko_.**

A head snapped to the side, another bout of twitching running through his left. A side of the mouth quirking up into an unwilling smile.

“What?” the hoarse, dry-throathed voice asks.

**This is a stubborn way to do it, and we both know that. It was amusing enough, but you have to learn.**

He looks at the cage.

**Do you want to set it ablaze?,** Vaatu asks, amidst an attempt to numb down the pain of the left side.

The vigorous shaking of a head.

Heartbeat that isn’t his, thumping violently, erratically. He shakes off the anger- it is part of him, but it isn’t what a child needs to see. Hasn’t been in a long while.

**Good** , he says instead.

“Why?” a hand trying to dislodge it from where it got stuck, in the middle of the cage’s bars.

**I have a better idea.**

  
  
  


-

  
  
  


Heartbeat thunder, throat blocked up as he waltzes through the foreign movements.

They’re too fluid for his body, that no longer obeys any of his whims. As Vaatu instructs him, his body twitches and refuses to turn and move the right way.

Graceless movement, panting through the agonizing forms.

His bare foot against the splinters, skin that can’t form callouses.

“Vaatu, stop moving my left!” Zuko complains. His voice is still loud.

He is still himself, even if it no longer feels like it.

The water does not move, even when he yells.

**I can’t help it, Vessel,** sighs Vaatu in his head. Under his voice, lays a bed of anxiety. **It’s not under my control. Not fully, at least.**

He sighs, resists the urge to scream.

Zuko feels a thirst so great it hurts his head. A hunger that pains him to Koh's lair and then back.

It is _hellish_.

The broth is clearly diluted, but it smells so, so very good.

He can already imagine himself feasting on the little bit of food that floats atop the blubbery, greasy surface of the bowl.

The flavors he already misses so dearly.

It’s a homesickness, a disease out of his control, powerful enough to make his arms hang limp beside him.

“I miss it, Voice.” he just says.

_(Bed-ridden once again, stuck in his room with nothing but puffy lips and a red nose._

_Sitting up in his bed, ignoring his dizzy head until he can’t do so anymore._

_The comfort of not being alone._

_“Good morning, sleepyhead.” Mom quips, ruffles his hair._

_Back then, she wasn’t willingly ignorant of any and everything related to her children._

_Azula blabbering in her lap, as she passes Zuko a bowl of soup._

_Through his blurry eyes, he looks at the soup. Wonders if Vaatu could do something to take the veggies away for him._

_“Bone broth?” he asks, with no real appetite._

_“Yup.” she says. “Drink it, Zuko. It’s good for you.”_

_A refusal that doesn’t stick for long._

_A tongue shown with a weak threat of spilling the bowl, before he gives in, chows it down like he knew what would someday befall him.)_

  
  


He misses her and he misses his bed and it hits so very suddenly, how different that place is from anything he could call a home.

He drops onto the floor, winces when he sits down on his left side.

Splinters dig into bare legs, where Hama had cut away some of the fabric.

“This is so empty.” he says.

Throat suddenly clogged with despair.

“I wanna go home.”

**I’ll teach you to** , Vaatu says, enticingly.

**We’ll go home.**

**But first.**

  
  


…

  
  


**First, you - we - have to learn.**

  
  
  


-

  
  
  
  
  


Anger powers his firebending, just as sadness soon becomes the force behind his jerky movements, every time he’s alone with the cage and the broth.

Vaatu’s instructions washing over him like the sound of the summer rain outside, like the dripping of dew.

It’s not hard to find himself misery, to conjure up waves of hot anger and disgust.

With it, droplets rise up.

Reverse cascade, lifted with jerky twitching movements.

**You’ve adapted the forms beautifully,** the Voice of his mentor compliments inside his head. 

And for a second, Zuko can manage to think he got some kind of success.

Through the walls of the cage, a tiny bit of the days-old soup.

Trembling in the air, droplets of overly-diluted, yet so very appetizing, food.

The first he’d had that week.

With his happiness, the water falls onto the floor.

  
  


  
  
  


-

  
  
  
  


A hand reaches out, tries to swat a fly with no real avail.

His tunic is a blanket between him and the splinters, the brown fabric stained a dark, coppery red.

It forms pretty patterns, but he isn’t interested in that.

Terror’s long since faded away, the pain is now a second skin.

What remains to be felt is the purest tedium.

“Can we do _something_?” Zuko asks. 

**Waterbending. We can do that.**

He groans, throws up his arm at the sing-song ringing in his head.

With a puffed up cheek, he responds.

“Something _fun_ , Vaatu!” he crosses his arm against the nub on the other side of it.

**Alright, alright. Sometimes, I forget you are a child.**

“I’m not a child!” he bursts out, hoarse screech as he throws up his hand. “I’m just bored!”

A sigh rings out inside his head, and he grimaces. The feeling of a hand petting his arm.

Turns onto his side, pulls a splinter away from the remains of his arm and winces.

**I’ll tell you a story, then.**

“Uh?” he asks, genuinely confused. “You mean, storytime?”

He had missed storytime.

When Father left him grounded in his room, there would always be storytime, between him and Vaatu. It was told in big pillow forts, in attempts to project figurines onto the walls, in a tongue of playing pretend with his toys.

“I can’t tell you a story back, though.” he realizes, frowning.  
  


**You can make one up, now come on, I’ve never told you about the first of the avatars, did I?**

“You didn’t.” he realizes. “You always said you would, but you never did.”

**I apologize for that, Vessel** , Vaatu says in his head, breaths like a cat's purrs.

Zuko shivers, curls up into a ball.

Below the thin fabric, some kind of bug crawls around.

He watches it, imagines what is underneath. Entertains the idea of something pretty, colorful (maybe appetizing?) for a few, brief moments.

Vaatu’s voice floods into his mind all of a sudden. It comes with the hope of something, of anything even a bit different.

**Once upon a time, Larva, there were two spirits. They were brother and sister,** purrs Vaatu inside his mind. **Larvae from the same primal matter, born to fulfill a greater purpose, in a primordial world.**

“Like me and Azula?” he asks. Azula always said Father and the Fire Lord would find a way to get her to be on the throne, and Zuko always knew he was going to be the Avatar of Chaos.

**I suppose, in a way. Although neither of them were particularly fond of knives. They - we, you ought to have guessed - were Raava and Vaatu, the first harbingers of chaos and order.**

**We were important, in that age.**

“You still are.”  
  


**I agree,** the voice preens, sounding like a smile and like warm spiced milk.

**But, either way, we were necessary, in those times.**

**Color in a gray word, blending and blurring, forming shapes slowly.**

**It was warm. It was an eternal competition, a dance for balance. We worked hard not to tip the scales too much.**

The last words come to both.

**"Until she did."**

  
  
  
  


-

  
  
  
  


Water is fond of music.

Zuko is no good for that, but he bangs his hand against the wall, taps his feet as well as he can.

Water is a _poem_.

So, Zuko recites verses, sings to it with no real rhythm, no real beat to his tune.

Verses in high fire nation, about Tui and La’s glory, about their great feats in the wars between humans.

But his singing does not convince the water to move, does not make La sink the ship or Tui bring him the beautiful things dragged away by the tide.

He is lonely, reciting verses from plays every night.

**It’s inaccurate** , Vaatu says. **It’s borderline _offensive_.**

“What else am I going to say?!” his left arm won’t stop moving, his mouth pulling away, interrupting the flow of his sentence.

His neck and his head all beg to tilt to the side, like the tide that pulls away at the sailors, leaving them clinging weakly to their boats.

**The water is more than the might,** Vaatu recites. **It’s the life in you, in the creatures that inhabit this place.**

**Water is everywhere.**

Something about that sends him an irrational wave of anger.

“I KNOW THAT!” Zuko screams out, bangs his fist against the wall.

**Then, you should know not to reduce it to manpower, to strength.**

He falls to the floor, breathes heavy.

In, out.

Exhaustion sets in quick, makes him feel like crying, all of a sudden.

**Breathe deep, and try again.**

**Don’t insult the thing that gives you life, Larva, and it will obey.**

  
  
  


-

  
  
  
  
  


Hama leaves him with the bowl for a week that time around.

It's there until the full moon is close enough for her to feel the thunder of his heartbeat, the strain in his lungs, the slow pumping of the blood, a heart somehow still beating, a system somehow still running.

In the dampest corner of the room, he lays atop his right side, curled up, splinters digging into his bony leg.

The flesh, mostly burned away, had already withered on that side.

Happy dreams, she supposes, hearing his calm breath, the smile that sometimes opens up a tiny bit.

“Voice, shut up.” he mutters, mouth barely opening, hardly closing as he talks in his sleep.

But his one eye, locked open for eternity, is staring up at Hama.

Twitching in place.

She likes seeing it, the way the spirit in him knows to watch out for her, as its host sleeps, as it festers inside the vermin child.

Hama has something so, so very nice in her hands.

Hama likes gifts, almost as much as she adores her games.

  
  
  
  


-

  
  
  
  


The stuffiest solstice rises up in the sky.

Zuko pants, shrinks into the wooden floor, lets the splinters dig into his skin.

He ran out of water, and Hama was yet to make her visit.

The summer air will drive him mad, will destroy him in no time.

Breaths taken in, puffed out in wisps of smoke.

His control is lost as fast as it had been gained.

Playing games with Vaatu isn’t fun, when they’re alone but stuck together and when everything somehow still _hurts_.

Nothing is fun, when the pain makes him dizzy and he is too hungry to get up and keep walking, to practice even a single kata.

What kind of Avatar is he, Zuko wonders, not being able to move, even when the footsteps approach through the hallway, slow and steadily cheerful.

Breaths, deep, in and out.

Control is important, even when motion is nauseating.

The door creaks open.

Light doesn’t register as much as the pain it brings.

She tsk-s softly, and Zuko shuts his eye, expecting the pain, ready to flinch.

Instead, her voice comes.

“Come on, little one, it’s very hot in here. I’ll take you outside.” her voice sounds kind all of a sudden, sounds sweet and soft and so, so very horrible like rot-

He opens his eye, focuses on her face.

Hama’s eyes look alive.

Like the world’s might has just shown itself to her, like mercy has come home to her heart and-

“R-Really?” comes off of him, blurted out thoughtlessly.

The response is the rope she ties around his neck.

  
  
  
  


-

The night is coming to grace that place slowly.

Twilight falling, the sky going purple and orange. 

Tiny stars twinkling up, peeking from behind the clouds.

The moon turning to them slowly through the windows, as Hama decides she wants to play with her spirit, in the night of her greatest power.

Take him outside while she is her strongest, show him what kindness means.

To raise a strong spirit, she must be both kind and strict. That’s why she ties him to a leash - he isn’t human, he is half-fire and half-dead - and pulls him through the house.

The boy trails after her, trying to scream through his restraints. 

Hama rolls her eyes, when he tries digging his heels in. He is just being choked more, he is just pushing himself closer.

Maybe he _wants_ to.

She’s seen the lengths people go to, to see the end of their line, to ease their own suffering.

Hama is unhindered by the thoughts of a child, committing a thing such as that.

The people of fire are prone to going out with bangs and bursts, and she can’t bother feeling concerned.

“This is my house.” she says, hand waving around the empty space. “If you behave, it’s yours too.”

He tries saying something.

She pulls.

The knot is tight, the knot is saving her so much time.

Through the damp hallways, through the plain, unassuming furniture. Colorfully colorless, bathed by the dim, fading orange light from every window.

He keeps pulling. Ungrateful creature, with no wonder-filled gaze in his eyes.

The right one, eyelashes catching up with the outside world, golden daggers glinting, begging for something to cut.

And the left one, burned open.

Not leaving her face for even a second.

Only one side of his disproportionate mouth is quirked up into the tiniest smile. 

She doesn’t doubt he will run. Hama likes it, the look of freedom they’ll sometimes get in their faces.

_(The first escapade she was able to go through with._

_She’d been there for moons, for so many moons now- the world had stopped counting as months, a long time ago -, and she was fleeing, never to know how long she would have withstood the might of that place._

_But, even though she bids that world goodbye, it refuses to let her leave.)_

  
  


The symbol of his wicked nation, loyal but never quite obedient enough.

Pulled whenever he tries to touch the furniture, yet still unable to learn.

“I’ve paid a lot for that, son. You’re a clumsy little boy, and you shouldn’t touch anything here.” she says, drags him close to her.

A whine comes off of him.

“Are you a dog?” she snaps, pulls at the leash. “Then shut up. Stop whining.”  
  


Wheezes as she pulls at the leash.

She knows what she is doing.

Hama has had plenty of pets before, and she isn’t letting this one away for very long.

  
  
  


-

  
  
  
  


Spirits are revered.

Vaatu may have no shrines to his name, no followers to worship him, but he is a spirit.

And he is _furious_.

He twists and turns in the confines of his vessel, as he whines and wheezes, dragged through narrow hallways and paper-thin walls, down the stairs of the inn, through an empty kitchen, and outside.

The outside drives both of them blind, for a second and then one more.

The eye twitches, uncomforming to Vaatu’s will. Refusing to focus on any of the beautiful sights, suddenly revealed to their confined minds.

**Calm down. Breathe.** he instructs. **Breathe and comply. She will eventually let the grip down.**

Zuko tries wheezing something, saying something. Talking back.

And he can’t reprehend the boy for that.

“No whining, remember?” the woman says. “Now come on, walk with me.”

Limping leg, skin burned into muscle and redness dragged against the tall, unkempt grass.

“It’s summer now.” the woman guides them. “You’re not one of them, so I suppose you don’t know.”  
  


**Firebender. She means firebender. Try to breathe**. He says.

They’re dragged through the tiny field, down to the garden the woman keeps.

Beaten dirt, shovels discarded near the corners of the land patch.

Plants peeking gently from the ground. Leaves and vines all contorted, twisted and bent.

Zuko tries to run, only pulls at the leash tighter.

Cabbages peeking from the dirt, ginger roots breaking through the garden. 

Hama watches with disinterest, when he tries to get the rope off his neck, undo the knot.

“Turmeric-ginger makes for a good tea.” She notes, casually. “It steeps quite fast, and it makes for a wonderful little treat. Very good for sore throats, son.”

A litany of profanities, of discontented hissing and growling.

And then, he can discern what Zuko tries muttering.

“N-No sw-e-w-swe-swea-”

And gagging.

“You can stop pretending, dearie.” Hama cups the left of his face gently, pulls it.

“T-to-too ti-”

The sound of a smack.

“Then don’t talk.” she says.

Anger leaves her face, her eyes twinkle with a smile, as she takes Zuko’s leash as if it were his hand, guides him around the carefully planted bushes.

“Now, as I was saying…”

  
  
  
  


-

  
  
  


Zuko’s neck aches.

He can’t be back in his room, and he can’t sit down.

The world is going down. His vision begins to darken.

No words come off of him, nothing but gasping and gagging.

He can barely breathe, even as Vaatu reminds him to.

Why can’t you help me?

Why can’t you help me, he wants to ask, over and over again.

He wants to scream.

But the rope is too tight around his neck.

A dog’s leash, being pulled towards the woods. Deeper and deeper into the masses, closer and closer to his final escapade.

The grassy gray-yellow, withering in the summer’s drought, gives way to beaten dirt and blue-green foliage.

Tree orchids and praying-bat-mantises eyeing him.

Beetles and flies swarming close, then falling down.

**Wow, you are fetid** , Vaatu imitates in his head. He sounds despaired, as if he’s begging for Zuko to cling on, to keep his hope.

He sounds half-like Azula, half like Mai, if he is to ignore the twinge of agony in his voice.

Zuko is hit with a wave of homesickness, at the tiny bit of humor, the tiny display of something even a bit funny.

He shakes his head.

Shakes away the voice.

There’s no mental barrier to save him from the distracting information.

**See, that flower over there? It only blooms in the full moon** , Vaatu says.

**It will bring us great benefit, to sing a bit about those. Think.**

The sun is going down, as Zuko hops and whines.

**Make it a good poem. Convince the world to move with you, to wait for you to take your steps.**

Roots and spikes, poking on his leg, the bare skin irritated by the persistence of the earth, its begging for some affection.

Breaths, deep, in and out.

He feels dizzy, he feels exhausted.

Hama does not give in, does not slow down or let her grip grow loose around the leash.

Scratchy rope against his scabs.

He can feel the slow trickle of droplets of blood, tainted and never-healing.

He isn’t the only one, though.

The woods around him feel it. The dripping of the offering, the food for things that can’t think in any meaningful way. The earth that begs to meet him, the fire-worms underneath clamoring for fresh meat.

The trees seem to open up, as the full moon climbs up into the sky, as the massive trees grow taller and taller, as he passes them by with despair and wonder alike.

Sunlight’s long faded, the moon settling down into her place on the throne.

The sky, bright and starry, full of white freckles, when Zuko looks up.

Little moles, little imperfections that open up into eyes.

**Can you feel her, Vessel?**

He can’t ask what, but he knows.

The moon.

**The full moon.**

  
  
  


**…**

  
  


**Larva, I’m sorry.**

  
  
  


-

  
  
  
  
  


The cave.

A gaping mouth, an entrance to another world. It is Hama’s world, it is Hama’s punishment for those she deems unfit, unworthy.

She knows best, she knows more of fair blows than any of those people could ever hope to, and she deserves to enact it.

Hama’s hands tremble, anxious for the blow, for the ecstasy of justice.

“You’ll see what your breed deserves, my dear.” she smiles, pets back his oily, half-fallen hair. “They’ve done so much wrong… I could let you join them, you know.”

She doesn’t dare loosen the leash, as she ties him to a wooden pole.

She’s had other pets before, and she’s glad she didn’t take down the tiny structure.

A part of Hama wants to hear him scream along with the others, she realizes, notes with vague contempt.

She can’t say she cares much for his breathlessness, but if she loosened the rope, he might escape.

Spirits are hard to catch.

_(“Spirits are hard to catch.” Her grandmama had once said. “But men are to hunt them down, for a spirit can bring forth thy wishes.”_  
  


_Warm words around the fireplace, as Hama shivered inside her parka, nestled into her brother’s tiny side._

_Heartbeats together,synchronized as her grandmother recited the words._

_“When tied to a pole, taken into a bottle, the spirit is forced to serve his captor, and sabotage him until he can be freed.”_

_Hama watched, the story drifting by with her words, imagined vividly in her head._

_It was beautiful._

_Everything was, when she had hopes of a spirit in a bottle all for herself.)_

  
  


And now, she had one for herself, tied and gasping, half-stuck in the body of a little boy.

Tiny, twig-like, forever wounded.

Shadow-spirits’ vessels don’t heal properly.

She wondered if hers could bend, or if he would just break.

Hama makes the swift decision to show him the forms clearly, in that night’s unofficial lesson.

  
  
  
  


-

  
  
  
  


The moon is fading out, when Hama’s pet manages to escape from her.

He runs and runs and runs.

The moon is still there, though, and the moon hears her song.

The poetry of limbs, control seized away.

The poetry of breathlessness, of a body falling to the floor. 

Submission etched into the blood, written in the runes of bone.

A gentle rhythm of erratic heartbeats, the contradiction of old beating new.

“Now, my pet.” her voice is the song of the stars, the will of the moon. She is fate walking, she is fate unyielding.

The spirits of a tribe long gone watch after her, as she hunts down her lost nobody. Deep breaths, as she runs through the woods she calls home.

Those trails belong to her. She has teraformed that land. The world is all at the mercy of her push and pull, willing itself to be the instrument of Hama's justice.

She may be an old woman, but her prey knows nothing of how that land works.

She can feel his heartbeat. All hers to stop. 

His face objects her commands, even as she takes control, corners him against a rock.

“You should prove you aren’t a nobody.” she gives him the mercy, pins him onto the ground.

Terrified doe eyes, his spirit-side twitching like it wants to somehow break out of her dance. Hama is patient, Hama is quiet and gentle, as she ponders what is the most fitting punishment to bring upon that disobedient animal.

_“You aren’t exactly doing that, are you?”_

  
  
  
  


**Author's Note:**

> I hope I did a good job with this one!
> 
> Other works that inspired this: Consider the wildflowers and No grave (hold my body)!
> 
> you can smell out my over-excited adoration for this stuff, can't you?


End file.
